Still single and increasingly attuned to the cacophony of her biological clock, 40-something Kassie (Jennifer Aniston) decides that if she can’t find a mate she’ll still pursue motherhood with the help of a sperm sample that’s not quite as anonymous as she thinks. As the baby grows up, Kassie’s best friend, Wally (Jason Bateman), agonizes over whether to reveal that he secretly replaced the donor sample with his own DNA.

Is it me? Notwithstanding the Law & Order SVU episode on a similar plot line, isn’t this rape? Wouldn’t any real woman think of it that way, even if it’s apparently A-ok in Connecticut? (Yeah, I too pretty much threw up in my mouth a bit after reading that.) I mean, it’s as jacked up as I can imagine, and this movie is branded a comedy.

So I saw this amazing menu item at the Conch Shack in Key West on Friday night of Labor Day weekend: bacon-wrapped, deep fried hot dog. That’s the sort of food that screams “eat me” on a menu, like venison chili at the Houndstooth pub or blackened …, well, anything.

The overall experience was just okay. The hot dog itself responded just fantastically to the deep fryer, but the bacon was overcooked, extra crispy and too dark, for the same reason.

I realize that this might be gilding the lily, but I think I would prefer the following cooking method:

A. Deep fry the hot dog. This is plainly awesome and probably can’t be improved by mere mortals.

B. Deep fry the bacon, but not all the way.

C. Wrap the bacon around the hot dog, and let the two rest while the fries or whatever else get ready. The bacon should readily absorb any excess heat from the hotdog, keeping it from over cooking while the bacon cooks a bit more and even bastes the hot dog in the Dom Perignon of gravies: bacon grease.

A friend proposed a similar recipe with even further undercooking, so that you could take the bacon/hotdog combo and melt cheese on it under the oven. But I said that’s just taking things a little too far. I mean, it’s a hot dog.

Today is a day I treat much like Memorial Day, with the difference that I’m not uncomfortable about receiving greetings today. (Memorial Day is for fallen servicemembers; I’m not in that category nor have I been in harm’s way. Many others have; think of them today.

The Supreme Court recently decided, 7-2,that the federal government has the power to civilly commit federal prisoners on the eve of their release if they meet some level of danger of future harm. The dissent, by Justices Scalia and Thomas, argued that only the states have the power to implement this sort of punishment/power.

I guess I’ll be citing this decision to people who dismiss Scalia and Thomas as right-wing conservatives. It sounds like they have taken a principled approach to applying the laws of the land and accepted a result that might otherwise be objectionable.

Our federal system makes tradeoffs that were readjusted in 1787 after the Articles of Confederation proved a poor framework. Two follow-on shifts occurred after the Civil War and during the Civil Rights era, but the second of those was not a structural change to the system but a tweaking of where we draw bright lines inside the gray borders between state and federal domains.

I sense that there could be great lessons in here for mindless conservatives who call themselves federalists or states’ rights folks only because they think they can get the rules they want, and perhaps great examples for mindless liberals who do not want to believe that they are only looking for the rules they want too. These mindless _____’s are more alike than different, and they are equally dangerous to our collective freedoms — freedom from ___, and freedom to ____.

“[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Declaration of Independence.

The way that I look at these groups, which I lump together, and others who operate from a different mindset from those although toward the same ends, is that the distinction is between rules-based and outcome-based politics. This being a democracy and all, and with the fundamental protections built into our federal and state constitutions, I see myself as a systems guy, with a belief that if our systems are well-constituted, and continually subject to improvement, we should be able to consistently improve our actual results over time, with fewer disruptions from political shifts of relatively minor proportion to the grand scheme.

In such a system, it is entirely possible that we could, as a society, legitimately come to different conclusions about how we would operate in nearly every sector of public life, from the expansion or restriction of government as a participant in the economy, whether by intervention, regulation, or participation, to the relative expectations about how widespread and uniform any regulation should be (which is another way of talking about the state-federal balance).

My theory is that the contradictory view of modern “liberals” on the federal government as both king-like protector and despotic villain are grounded in the combination of Watergate, Vietnam, and the Civil Rights movement. In those three seminal interactions with the baby boomers, many saw the worst and best of the federal government all at once. (And to be clear, many people who call themselves conservatives have a similar fear of government.)

At the same time, modern “conservatives” have latched on to different memes, showing the potential tyranny of the central government and the entrepreneurial spirit of a vigorous federal system, a laboratory of 50 regulatory approaches that could lead us all to finding more efficient ways of regulating ourselves to maximize freedoms and wealth while minimizing dislocation costs, crime, and negative externalities.

I confess that I have never thought about specific elements of our history that are likely to be responsible for (or at least ideologically connected to), this description of “conservatives.” Perhaps World War II and Roosevelt’s court-packing plan, the Slaughterhouse cases, and similar depression-era changes are the genesis, but I seldom hear these types of people talk about these events. Maybe it is the failings of other governments, where tyranny has taken hold, that is the real example this group keeps learning from.

What events/movements provide the touchstones for this rule-based group? Do you think that there are inherent benefits to rules-based or outcome-based politics?

So there’s been a lot of press on the iPad + Velcro ™ video. And it’s well done, insightful, and mildly amusing.

The shame of it is that it is flanked by an absolutely awesome video from the same fellow, Jesse Rosten: iPad shopping could look like this. I’d have to buy stock in J. Crew and BCBG if my wife could get this. (Of course, it would be worth it: just look at her.)

This WSJ editorial reprint of an earlier article by Milton Friedman describes the shift in doctor-patient relationships as a result of managed care companies hiring doctors to provide medical services.

I briefly commented on this on my Observations page in relation to a suggestion that we need to allow non-lawyer ownership of “law firms” to bring down legal costs. Separate from the misguided proposal of having non-lawyers doing legal work (which is like having lawyers doing surgery), there is a notion that third-party ownership of professionals would improve things. As I noted in that short post:

Fee-sharing: the relevant question here is how/why we accept the notion of doctors sharing medical fees with non-doctors not bound by ethical rules. It seems to me that either we lawyers follow in the footsteps of doctors, or the doctors got it wrong and should be shaking off the HMOs and insurance companies.

What struck me about the Friedman so quickly that I had to stop and write this (writing this, I still actually haven’t made it past the phrase “doctors and patients as enemies”) was the depiction of the doctor and patient as opponents in the cost containment battle rather than as a united front against disease.

A comparison is in order:

I don’t think many of my learned liberal friends (and yes, that, just like “learned conservative” isn’t always an oxymoron) would very much like the idea of a lawyer who had substantial other interests to protect. There are references to this in Guantanamo detainees distrusting the incredibly liberal and supportive lawyers trying to defend them (and perhaps breaking the law in the process): the detainees distrust the system so much that they doubt any part of it could be on their side.

In our legal system, prosecutors have a special ethical duty, singled out for them, to find truth. Their job is explicitly NOT to convict someone for a crime. Defense lawyers have no such obligation to find justice. We expect that the people working for us, particularly professionals who have these special skills, special privileges, AND special obligations to society, to be on our team 100% of the time.

If HMOs put doctors at odds with patients, what would corporate legal service providers do? Eliminate discovery? Substitute their judgment on accepting a settlement? Plaintiffs’ lawyers working on contingency already handle many of these issues when the client in charge of the litigation doesn’t bear the costs of maintaining it. In most cases, lawyers “guide” their clients in reasonable directions, and usually lawyers can withdraw if things become untenable (thus almost certainly forfeiting economic claims for whatever work is done or value created). The moral hazard of separating responsibility for payment and authority for expenses is too great for any field to bear for long (except Congress, where it can last for decades in some cases until voters wake up).

The stated rationale for no fee-sharing with non-lawyers is to preserve the lawyer’s independence in complying with ethical obligations and the representation of the client without the influence of a person who doesn’t have the same ethical obligations towards the client.

Tell me what you think: what is it about doctors?

Why do we trust them to abide by their ethical rules and oath but not lawyers?

Is it the underlying belief that science and test results will reveal bogus advice whereas lawyers can be more vague and un-catchable?

Or were the lawyers simply smart enough to see what happened to doctors’ practices?

What’s the relationship between these two professions and where did they diverge?

Is it just that we all expect to need healthcare? Why not use vouchers like with charter schools? (Oops, didn’t mean to stir up that debate!)

One of my favorite sources for inspiration is Springwise. The latest issue spat out a few interesting ideas. Mybrandz (perhaps seeking to be the “Bratz” of the investment world) is a stock portfolio (not an actual mutual fund that you can invest in but rather a faux fund) of “brands people love.”

Basically, these folks made a list of “cool” brands and decided to report the performance of this “stock portfolio.” Now, in fact, they’ve morphed this into a contest where brand fans can post content, get “hearts” awarded by the other users, and win a share of stock in that company. So, the underlying idea is really about marketing and getting people to engage.

But to me the more interesting idea is one that creates stock portfolios like this, personal tracking funds, for various reasons.

One is definitely vanity/marketing. The idea that mybrandz, which seems to be some sort of branding consultancy (there’s probably a Madison Ave. term for it, but here on the outside I’d call it that), creates a portfolio that is designed to draw attention to their underlying business. How about someone like Flextronics creating a portfolio of their customers, or at least of large electronics companies that rely heavily on outsourced manufacturing?

Another goal might be to double-down or indulge in your personal spending. AmericanExpress could probably create such a portfolio automatically from my statements of the companies where I invest spend the most money each month, or that have the highest number of transactions. What do I get from that? Well, if “my” companies are doing well, maybe I interpret that to mean that I’m good at identifying quality or value.

I could take that same information that “my” companies are doing well and I interpret that to mean that I’m feeding these expectations of growing corporate profits that are feeding the stock price increases and –whew–therefore should shop somewhere else. Indeed, instead of doing namby-pamby personal balance sheets for their clients, perhaps Ameriprise could just suck in account information from the other side of the house to identify quantifiable improvements in spending. Admittedly it’s a bit abstract, but that’s where we started.

Sales professionals always talk about customer results as a means of convincing new customers, with everything from 17% reductions in postage to airport terminal ads that say “Nike runs SAP.” Those are different methods of saying the same thing: we helped these folks — we can help you. Maybe if your sales target is the CEO/CFO of a publicly traded company, you should simply post the “McKinsey Portfolio Index” and let the chips fall where they may. The CEOs who won’t be impressed by this won’t even notice it, and the ones who will be impressed will, well, be impressed. The concept works best when you do all the work for a particular company so that you can claim the credit.

Do companies who use only FedEx do better than those that use only UPS? Well, the samples aren’t likely to be equivalent, but if you’re on the winning side of that argument, wouldn’t you post the data? Let the other side complain that their customers are in low-margin businesses and so the comparison isn’t really fair, blah blah blah. Hint: no customer wants to sign up to be part of the “low-margin business” crowd.

What other benefits or use cases do you see to creating your own stock portfolio like this? What would make you do it for yourself? Or for your company or business?

A Gwitter is someone who ghost-writes twitter updates for a celebrity who (A) can’t be bothered, (B) can’t be trusted not to go “off-message,” or (C) can’t type as many as 140 characters on a phone.

Dude, President Obama just sent a tweet about Autism Awareness!

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that’s just his gwitter.

UPDATE: So everyone thought that this post fell into the 5% of humor [attempts] that appear here. But here’s a revelatory story describing Pres. Obama telling Chinese students that he has never used twitter:

Obama was asked by a student, “Do you know about the great firewall and should we be able to use Twitter?” His reply: “I have never used Twitter but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access.”

In one ad-hoc poll, 20% of people thought he was writing himself at least sometimes. Nope: gwitter all the way.

Quick note: watching an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay. He’s at Phil’s Fish Market in Monterey, CA (technically Moss Landing). Pam looked at it and said, “hey, isn’t that the place we used to go?”

Turns out it definitely is. We would go to the Aquarium in Monterey with visitors and stop there for a great lunch/early dinner on the way home, or after a day of kayaking on Elkhorn Slough. (Yes, that was pre-children!)

One day at the grocery store, I was thinking about competition and marketing while walking down the cookie aisle. I saw the 100-calorie snack packs (a section that is now surprisingly large for a segment that didn’t exist that long ago). I told my wife that someday we’d see a 99-calorie snack pack. In fact, not too long ago, we spotted something like this product.

This very funny tweet triggered my memory and got me to put this post together:

Idea of the day: 100-calorie workout packs to work off those 100-calorie snack packs.